Sunday, July 17, 2016

Paleo-Orthodoxy: Was Jesus In India?

Could
it be that Jesus spent his lost years in India and Tibet? Some New
Age and Theosophical oriented authors and teachers think so. But is
there any evidence for this belief?

Nikolai
Aleksandrovich Notovich,
known in the West as Nicolas
Notovitch was
a Crimean
Jewishadventurer
who claimed to be a Russian aristocratand
journalist.In
1894, he created quite a stir with the publication of his book,
The Unknown Life of Christ. The
book claims that during his lost years Jesus left Galilee
for
India
and
studied with Buddhists
and
Hindus
there
before returning to Judea.Notovitch's
claim was based on a document he said he had seen at the Hemis
Monastery.

Notovitch
claimed that he broke his leg in India and while recovering from it
at the
Hemis monastery in Ladakh, he learned of the "Life of Saint
Issa, Best of the Sons of Men" –Isa
being the Arabic name of Jesus in Islam. Notovitch's story, with the
text of the "Life," was published in French in 1894 as La
vie inconnue de Jesus Christ.
It was translated into English, German, Spanish, and Italian.

Notovitch
claimed that the chief lama at Hemis told him of the existence of the
work, which was read to him through an interpreter, the somewhat
detached verses of the Tibetan version of the "Life
of Issa.”
Notovich claim it had originally been translated from the Pali
language.
Notovitch claimed that he himself afterward grouped the verses "in
accordance with the requirements of the narrative."
As published by Notovitch, the work consists of 244 short paragraphs,
arranged in fourteen chapters. The otherwise undocumented name "Issa"
resembles the Arabic name
Isa, used in the Quran to refer to Jesus and the Sanskrit "īśa",
the Lord.

The
"Life of Issa" begins with an account of Israel in Egypt,
its deliverance by Moses, its neglect of religion, and its conquest
by the Romans. Then follows an account of the Incarnation. At the age
of thirteen the young Jesus, rather than take a wife, leaves his home
to wander with a caravan of merchants to India (Sindh), to study the
laws of the great Buddhas. Issa is welcomed by the Jains, but leaves
them to spend time among the Buddhists, and spends six years among
them, learning Pali and mastering their religious texts. Issa also
spent six years studying and teaching at Jaganath, Rajagriha, and
other Hindu holy cities. The claimed “translation” says:

“They
taught him to read and understand the Vedas, to cure by aid of
prayer, to teach, to explain the holy scriptures to the people, and
to drive out evil spirits from the bodies of men, restoring unto them
their sanity.”

Issa
is said to come into conflict with the Brahmans (Hindu priests) over
his teaching of the lower castes.

“But
Issa listened not to their discourses and betook him to the Sudras,
preaching against the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas. He inveighed
against the act of a man arrogating to himself the power to deprive
his fellow beings of their rights of humanity; "for," said
he, "God the Father makes no difference between his children;
all to him are equally dear."1

It
also has Jesus saying such strange things as:

“The
Judge Eternal, the Eternal Spirit, comprehends the one and
indivisible soul of the universe, which alone creates, contains, and
vivifies all.”

“He
is the principle of the mysterious existence of man, in whom he has
breathed a part of his Being.”

At
twenty-nine, Issa returns to his own country and begins to preach. He
visits Jerusalem, where Pilate is apprehensive about him. The Jewish
leaders, however, are also apprehensive about his teachings, yet he
continues his work for three years. He is finally arrested and put to
death for blasphemy, for claiming to be the Son of God. His followers
are persecuted, but his disciples carry his message to the world.
Notovitch's
book stirred up significant controversy as soon as it was published.
Max
Müller,
a German philologist and Orientalist, who was one of the founders of
the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of
comparative religion,expressed
incredulity at the accounts presented and suggested that either
Notovitch was the victim of a practical joke, or had fabricated the
evidence.3
Müller said:

“Taking
it for granted that M. Notovitch is a gentleman and not a liar, we
cannot help thinking that the Buddhist monks of Ladakh and Tibet must
be wags, who enjoy mystifying inquisitive travelers, and that M.
Notovitch fell far too easy a victim to their jokes.”

Müller
then wrote to the head lama at Hemis monastery to ask about the
document and Notovitch's story. The head lama replied that there had
been no Western visitor at the monastery in the past fifteen years,
during which he had been the lama there, and there were no documents
related to Notovitch's story.4Other
European scholars also opposed Notovitch's account and Indologist
Leopoldvon
Schroeder,
notable
for his translation of the Bhagavad
Gita from
Sanskritto
German,
called
Notovitch's story a "big
fat lie".

J.
Archibald Douglas,
who
was a professor of English and History at the Government College in
AgraIndia,
visited the Hemis monastery to interview the head lama who had
corresponded with Müller and the lama again stated that Notovitch
had never been there and no such documents existed. Wilhelm
Schneemelcher,
a German Protestant theologian and expert on the New Testament
Apocrypha
(died 2003),states
that Notovich's accounts were soon exposed as fabrications, and that
to date no one has even had a glimpse at the manuscripts Notovitch
claims to have had.5Notovich
at first responded to claims by defending himself.But
once his story had been re-examined by historians, Notovitch finally
gave up and confessed to having fabricated the evidence.6

Controversial
author Bart
D. Ehrman,
says that "Today
there is not a single recognized scholar on the planet who has any
doubts about the matter. The entire story was invented by Notovitch,
who earned a good deal of money and a substantial amount of notoriety
for his hoax."7

However,
this
was not the end of the Jesus in India myth, as others picked up on
Notovich's story and embellished it. In
1899 Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad
wroteJesus
in India(published
in 1908) and claimed that Jesus had traveled to India after surviving
crucifixion, but specifically disagreed with Notovitch that Jesus had
gone to India before crucifixion.

Contemporary
New Age authors and fringe writers have taken these themes and incorporated them into
their own works. For example, in her book "The
Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus' 17 Year Journey
to the East",
Elizabeth
Clare Prophet,
former leader of the Church
Universal and Triumphant
cult in Montana,relying
heavily on Notovich,asserts
that Buddhist manuscripts provide evidence that Jesus traveled to
India, Nepal, Ladakh and Tibet.8

In
his book Jesus
Lived in India,
German author Holger
Kerstenpromoted
the ideas of Nicolas Notovich and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Gerald
O'Collins
classified Kersten's work as the repackaging of the same stories.

So
is there any evidence whatsoever for the belief that Jesus went to
India? The clear and unavoidable answer is an emphatic no.

The facts are that Notovich's story and the text itself does not hold
up to academic scrutiny.

Also, the words Notovich places in Jesus
mouth, reflective of a panentheistic9
view of God, would never have been uttered by an orthodox Jew living
an orthodox Jewish life, such as Jesus lived. Nor do they find any connection to the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the canonical Gospels.

And finally, Notovich's
admitting to have invented the entire story must be taken into
account. It is clear we are dealing with a hoax here, and yet another fringe myth is debunked.

5New
Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1: Gospels and Related Writings(1990),
Page 84, “A particular book
by Nicolas Notovich...shortly after the publication of the book, the
reports of travel experiences were unmasked as lies. The fantasies
about Jesus in India were also soon recognized as invention...down
to today, nobody has had a glimpse of the manuscripts with the
alleged narratives about Jesus.”

7Forged:
Writing in the Name of God, New
York, Harper and Collins, pp. 282-283

8Elizabeth
Clare Prophet, The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of
Jesus' 17 Year Journey to the East, page
468.

9The
belief that God includes in Himself all that exists, and
interpenetrates it. This is in conflict with the orthodox Christian
doctrine of God's distinction from His creation. He remains wholly
“other”.